Don’t Blame the Met Not Being Able to Increase Its $6 Per Visitor Revenue Stream

Artsy's Isaac Kaplan has an odd post on the management of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. Setting himself the task of isolating the Met's revenue from admissions to determine whether the museum's operating deficit comes from a dearth of voluntary contributions, Kaplan discovers that, no, the admissions policy is not to blame:

So the question becomes: Are stingy visitors to blame for the current deficit?

After playing around with some of the numbers, I don’t think so—at least not any more so than in years past. I took a look at the Met’s financials from fiscal years 2009 to 2015 to see if there is some connection between the average revenue received per person admitted to the museum and the institution’s surplus or deficit, year to year.

Having asked and refuted his own question, Kaplan ignores some of the interesting and important questions behind his inquiry. What Kaplan was hoping to find was a decline in admissions revenue that would somehow magically match the deficit that has forced the Met to layoff staff.

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